


Every Plan is a Tiny Prayer to Father Time

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, post-4x09, pov fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-4x09 angst & introspection. Team Arrow makes their way to the hospital. Told in six parts.</p>
<p>“I may not be as smart as my daughter but I know her heart like it beats in my chest,” Donna tells him then. “She’s never let herself need someone like she needs you. Not since her father left. And she’s never needed you more than she does right now.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Plan is a Tiny Prayer to Father Time

_Told in six parts, from six different POVs (Laurel - > Thea -> John -> Quentin -> Donna -> Oliver)._

_Title from “[What Sarah Said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I483tB12SyE)” by Death Cab for Cutie._

**Every Plan is a Tiny Prayer to Father Time**

Thea’s phone rings first.

They’ve stayed behind with Alex to break down the event, and Laurel’s up in the gazebo helping Oliver’s sister and her apparent new squeeze (they’re not as good at hiding it as they think they are). She’s boxing up loose flyers and only just noticing how Felicity’s mom is standing a little too close to her father in what’s left of the crowd. She’s starting to think maybe they’re both also smiling a little too big, when she hears the familiar cell phone chime.

“Ollie?” His sister’s tone goes from curious to concerned in the span of two syllables. Her next words are frantic, though nowhere near as panicked as the voice that Laurel can make out on the other end as she steps closer. “What…okay, slow down. What’s going on?”

Thea gasps, drawing a hand to her mouth, and stumbling a little on her heels. Thankfully, it’s in Alex’s direction, and he catches her by the arm, a hold he doesn’t release once she rights herself.

“Where are you?” The words are shaky and sound like they scrape at Thea’s throat. She hangs up at the same moment that Laurel hears her father’s phone go off somewhere behind her. But she can’t tear her eyes away from Oliver’s sister, who’s gone white as a sheet.

They might be the first ones to know it, but Laurel recognizes this moment, she’s lived a few of them before. The world has just shifted on its axis once again, and she can tell by the haunted look on the other girl’s face that this turn is an especially bad one. After a moment that feels like an hour, Thea finally speaks. “We have to get to the hospital.”

“Thea, what happened?” Laurel and Alex ask some version of the same question at the same time, concern furrowing both their brows in a similar fashion, though Laurel knows that very different worries are darkening their thoughts.

“Darhk’s Ghosts…” she tells them, and something starts buzzing in Laurel’s ears. “They blindsided them, shot up the limo.”

“ _Jesus_ …” Laurel exhales so hard she nearly goes dizzy, knowing by Thea’s expression that the answer to her next question won’t be the one she’s looking for. “Are they…are they okay?”

“Ollie’s…I don’t know, actually…” It’s one of those moments where the words not spoken eclipse everything else. These kinds of things always seem to happen that way.

“ _Felicity_?” The buzzing sharpens, revealing itself to be a mantra of sorts. _Don’t let her be dead,_ Laurel pleads to no one in particular. _Don’t let her be dead. Don’t let her be dead._

“I think Ollie’s okay,” Thea repeats, still stumbling over the words. “Felicity’s not.”

A pained shriek goes up from the crowd, anguished enough to snap the three of them from their daze as they turn to locate the source. And in the moment when Donna Smoak collapses, sobbing, into her father’s arms, exactly one of Laurel’s questions finds an answer.

* * *

When she shuts the passenger door behind her, it’s eerily quiet inside Laurel’s car and Thea can’t shake the odd feeling of deja vu that washes over her.

“Feels a lot like…”

“It’s not.” Laurel interrupts in a cold, hard voice. Somehow, she knows exactly where her mind’s gone, which is comforting and terrifying at the same time. It is nice, though, not to have to explain it to anyone on the outside. She had brushed Alex off after Ollie’s call, and she’ll feel bad about it later, but the poor boy’s not cut out for this kind of tragedy.

“But it does, doesn’t it?” It’s her own fault for thinking she could have it both ways in the first place. She is a Queen, after all.

“Yeah,” Laurel says with a sigh as she peels the car onto the road, pressing down hard on the accelerator. “It does.”

_Thea remembers that night in vivid detail, remembers their housekeeper waking her up in the early hours of the morning, remembers coming down the stairs to find her mother and the Lances, tear-stained and uncharacteristically bedraggled. Details were still sketchy at that point, but it was obvious even then that this was going to be one of those nights that splintered indelible cracks into everything they all thought they knew about their lives._

_“You wanna watch a movie?” She remembers Laurel’s offer, remembers how her brother’s girlfriend had been so distraught she didn’t even bother to hide the liquor she swiped as the two of them hunkered down in the den in an effort to escape real-world logistics and their parents’ tangible grief._

_“I don’t need a babysitter,” she recalls spitting at Laurel, sometime before Tommy showed up. They both knew to make nothing of it. Laurel, she remembers, had just blinked at her and turned back to the TV, changing the channel anytime things started to get close to home. Despite the mangled complications, the two of them were bound by tragedy that night._

That connection, however tense, has lasted throughout the years that followed, taking on new life after her near-death experience last year. Now, Thea knows for a fact that there’s no one she’d rather have by her side as they face this latest cataclysm.

“Laurel, if she…”

She trails off, unable even to say the words. Suddenly, the only thing she can think of is how unbelievably happy her big brother had looked tonight, when Felicity said yes. His disbelieving smile had split a massive matching grin across her own face, and when he met her eyes, bride-to-be tightly tucked into his side, she knew that they were both thinking of how close he had come to missing out on this kind of joy.

“I lost Sara, twice now. We lost you last year,” Laurel’s unflinching optimism cuts through her reverie and Thea holds her breath at conviction she hopes isn’t misguided. “I’m not about to lose another sister.”

They stay silent for a long moment, and it’s the first piece of quiet since her phone rang earlier, though there’s nothing calm about it. The two of them square off with their own mortality every night they suit up in this city, it’s a part of the job to know that any mission could be their last. But it’s becoming more and more evident that no one’s even allowed the consideration that Felicity was just as susceptible.

Susceptible, and indispensable, Thea knows this to be true. Their team worked before she and Laurel had suits of their own. They’ve kept things going when Digg stepped away, and even when Oliver was overseas reclaiming his happiness. But without Felicity, it feels like the whole thing might fall apart.

“If she dies,” Thea repeats to no one, fully aware that this is something they both already know, “I don’t think we’ll ever get him back again.”

* * *

John’s halfway home when he gets the call, and his hands shake for the first time in years as he hangs up on Thea and dials Lyla’s number. He hears a shaky gasp on the other end of the line when he explains the situation, and mentally adds this moment to the one-handed count of times he’s heard terrified tears in his wife’s voice.

_“You call me every hour,”_ she orders by way of farewell as he pulls into the emergency room parking structure. He’d give just about anything to have her by his side right now, but there’s no way he’s letting either of his girls leave the apartment when there’s a target on their backs. They’ve resolved not to clue in A.R.G.U.S. until they have some more clarity on the situation. 

He just sighs, letting his heavy heart weight every word. “We’re probably not going to know anything for a few…”

_“Not for her, Johnny,”_ Lyla interrupts and he loves her even more. _“For you. And everybody else. You call me, or text me, so I know everyone’s okay.”_

He agrees, knowing how she means that last part. Their emotional shorthand is just one of the reasons they make such a good team, in every capacity. But it’s hard to be grateful for anything in this moment, hard to even believe that the sun might ever shine again.

He’s the first one to make it there, and it doesn’t take long to find Oliver pacing himself into a divot in the ICU hallway, accosting anyone in scrubs. He barely registers Digg’s presence, and the former soldier takes that as his cue to fall back into old habits, snapping immediately to protection mode. He flanks his brother-in-arms, watching his back and waiting for reinforcements, knowing that’s the only help he can offer right know.

Then, the whole thing breaks down. Some poor, unknowing nurse makes the costly mistake, trotting out the old line about “family members only,” and he watches as old, familiar storm clouds roll in, darkening his friend’s eyes.

“She’s my…” When Oliver’s lips won’t make the words, the rest of his body decides to do the talking, and it takes every single ounce of Digg’s strength to hold his friend back from the double doors that stand between him and the heart he prays is still beating.

“ _Steady_ ,” he warns without much confidence, knowing his words will fall on deaf ears. He’s using his full weight to brace him back, and with every second that passes, it becomes clearer that they’re going to need some backup sooner than later.

“Felicity…” Her name always sounds different when Oliver says it, but this time it scrapes from his throat like steel wool, close to the Arrow voice with no need for a modulator. “I _need_ her.”

“ _Ollie_?” Digg allows himself the tiniest sigh of relief when Thea and Laurel round the corner, jumping immediately into action. Laurel steps into position beside him, lending her strength and allow his straining muscles some respite, while Thea takes on to the attendant behind the desk, angling to assuage her concern and assess her knowledge at the same time.

“If you can’t calm him down,” the woman warns his sister, sounding like she’s been here before, “I’m going to have to call the police and have him arrested.”

“You could try,” Thea retorts briskly, and Digg thinks she’s talking about Quentin, almost misses how Laurel slides a hand up the back of his Oliver’s jacket. Suddenly, most of the fight goes out of him. It’s a true testament to Oliver, though – and to Felicity too, Digg supposes – that he still manages to strain against them even as his eyes droop.

When they’re finally able to drop him into a waiting room chair, they breathe a collective sigh that’s anything but relieved, and Thea tosses a shrug at the attendant’s raised eyebrow. “Adrenaline,” she offers, and that’s enough for the woman who didn’t really care that much in the first place.

It’s almost harder once it’s calm, once there’s nothing for them to do but sit in a cluster around Oliver – whose eyelids are still fluttering as his body fights against the sedative – and hash out the sparse details they can gather. Digg feels useless without a physical task, nearly ready to barge back there himself and hold Felicity together with his own two hands, but soon, Lance walks in with Donna and they’ve got a whole new set of worries. The feeling of helplessness only increases when he finds himself unable to make eye contact with Felicity’s mother and the familiar detective.

It takes a moment of introspection, counting the scuff marks on the dingy tile floor, for him to figure out why. He’s lost people before, that’s nothing new. He’s lost his parents, he’s lost brothers in real life, sisters in combat. But _daughters_ , that’s something else entirely.

* * *

There’s something about a messy divorce – one soaked in grief and regrets and scotch – that makes you forget things about yourself. Who you were, what you were good at, what made you happy. In the weeks since meeting Donna at the bar, Quentin Lance has started to remember.

One thing that he’s remembered is that he was absolutely aces at planning dates. But that’s back out the window now, along with the plans he had made for the second (third?) romantic outing with the blonde beauty who makes him smile so wide it makes his cheeks ache, muscles he though had atrophied long ago. Granted, a wrench had been thrown in those works the second he realized she was Felicity’s mother, but he had still pulled every string left, called in every favor he had saved up, in the hopes of knocking her off her feet.

As luck would have it, something else would do that for him.

Donna’s frantic the whole way to the hospital, sobbing to the point that her words are practically unintelligible between hiccups. But once they reach the ICU and check in with the team, once they see Queen slacked into submission by something almost as strong as he is, once there’s nothing left to do but wait, and trust, and hope, she settles.

A kind of stoicism comes over her, like a shell of self-preservation, and she sits silently in the waiting room, staring with unseeing eyes at the empty walls, occasionally glancing around to watch the rest of group. Most times, her gaze lands on Oliver, but still, she stays silent. It seems so incongruous with the bubbly, brightly-colored woman he met at the bar that night, but she wears it like a second skin and he realizes he doesn’t really know her at all.

“Listen, I’m here if you need…anything,” he offers when he can’t take the quiet anymore. It sounds pathetic, even to his ears, but it’s better than deafening silence, better than blinding rage at the unfairness of it all. Every worst case scenario, every detail down to the fact that he’s unable to explain how he knows Felicity to her own mother, how he has to chalk her up to “a friend of my daughter,” it’s too much to bear.

He thinks it can’t possibly get any worse, and then she answers him.

“Quentin, you nearly choked on your tongue when I called you my boyfriend earlier.” Donna’s words are chilly, though she turns to him with an attempt at a weak smile. She’s aware of how fake it looks, he’s certain of that. “I’m not asking you for anything.”

He recognizes that hardened look, he realizes belatedly. He’s seen glances of it on her daughter in times like these, memories he can’t begin to explain to the woman wracked with worry beside him. For all he knows of the Queens, he knows next to nothing of Felicity Smoak’s family history, but it doesn’t take a real-life detective to parse together that the iciness in Donna’s tone comes from lessons learned the hard way.

Other men might run from this – other men probably have – and they might not be wrong to do it. This thing could be too heavy for him to carry alone, and it doesn’t show up in the handbooks for new relationships or even the twelve-step programs he knows by heart. But he’s strong, he knows that much, and over the years he’s learned a thing or two about daughters and loss.

Plus, when he really digs down, it’s not nobility that’s keeping him here. It’s those sparkling eyes and that smile, the way she made him laugh, really laugh, for the first time in years. It’s the second (third) date that could have been. That still could be.

“You know, it’s not asking if I’m offering,” he tells her, though he knows from her almost immediate eye roll – something else he recognizes – that the line’s no better than “it’s not you, it’s me.”

“Listen, someday…” He starts again, because she deserves that much and more. “Not tonight, but someday, we’re going to have a nice dinner, and I’m going to tell you all about why I might actually be the best person in the world for you to be with tonight.”

* * *

_That’s_ a line she’s never heard before, and Donna tells herself it’s the unfamiliarity that makes her lips purse, just briefly, in spite of herself.

The tiniest hint of a smile gives Quentin the courage to pry her hand where it’s white-knuckling the cheap plastic armrest of the waiting room chair, and lace his fingers through hers. She watches the entire movement, cursing herself for having the sense but not the strength to pull away. There’s nothing left to do with him but steel her resolve and cut it off at the pass, she’s smart enough to know that. Still, she raises her watery gaze back to meet his and tries to ignore the way her stomach does a little flip at the furrow in his brow.

“Just something to hold onto,” he offers with a little shrug. “If you need it.”

She ducks her head then, turning away once again as the tears spill her from her eyes, though her traitorous hand gives his a squeeze that feels like a lifeline. The silence between them is different than the one that’s settled over the group, but they’re both filled with beeps and footsteps, hushed murmurs and distant, frantic tone, sounds that remind them of where they are, as if anyone could possibly forget. After a long moment, she speaks again.

“I quit smoking when she got old enough to lecture me about it.” Her voice crackles like VHS static on a home movie, and she can still see Felicity’s eyes narrowing at her from behind her first pair of glasses. “I haven’t wanted a cigarette this bad in twenty years.”

“I’d give the hand you’re not holding for a glass of scotch right about now,” he admits in return, looking relieved when she smiles again, just a little. It’s sympathy, she tells herself, nothing more. “Maybe a bottle. Something else we have in common.”

She’ll give it tonight, Donna concedes. She’ll hold his hand, because she needs to, she’ll let him help her to be strong, let him do what Oliver is unable to do for her daughter right now. The poor boy, she can’t stop staring at him, nearly catatonic in the chair, save for the tiny movement of his middle finger against his thumb. Just an hour ago, he was smiling like he couldn’t believe his luck, down on one knee and then up in Felicity’s arms, pressing a desperate kiss to her daughter’s temple that had made Donna’s heart twist in the best possible way.

This is what they get, she and her daughter, she should know it by now. Tiny, fleeting moments of pure joy followed by staggering, earth-shattering blows. She had let herself believe that Felicity escaped it here, in a penthouse loft, in a fancy corner office, in the arms of a man who looked at her like she hung the moon and provided its light, too. But still, even now, this is what they get.

The day Felicity’s father left was the day her genius girl had won her first science and engineering fair, Donna remembers it like it was yesterday. She had plastered a smile and spewed excuses after the ceremony, mentally deducing a vengeance equitable to the heartbreaking look on her daughter’s face when she realized he wasn’t there to see her intricate, award-winning display for a project Donna hadn’t even begun to understand. (Though she does remember learning, by way of a particularly epic eye roll, that “Boolean” has nothing to do with soup.) But there was no explaining it away when they came home, after celebratory sundaes, to a half-empty house.

After that, after they had wiped each other’s tears and picked themselves up again, her daughter was the sun around which Donna orbited. Without her, it’s hard not to feel like she’d have nothing left. As she takes one more look around, surveying the worried faces and clenched fists that fill their corner of the waiting room, she knows she’s not alone with that thought.

* * *

The first words Oliver hears in what feel like hours are his sister’s, and he forces his eyes to focus on her face in front of him.

“Ollie?” His mind is fuzzy, weighed down by something heavy and chemical, but the memories, unfortunately, are clear as day. The flashes of rapid gunfire, the warmth of her blood on his hands, a Christmas carol he’ll never hear again.

“What happened?” It’s like the whole room sucks in a collective breath, and he can actually see the color drain from Thea’s face.

“Felicity…”

“To _me_ ,” he interrupts, unwilling to hear her or anyone else say the words out loud.

“They sedated you,” she says, but suddenly she won’t meet his eyes and he doesn’t know why that’s the answer she’s afraid to give. Unless it’s a lie.

“Thea.”

“ _I_ sedated you,” she admits, nodding to the folded arms that flank her on the right. “Well, technically Laurel did.”

“With what?”

His sister pulls out what looks like one of Felicity’s Epi-Pens. “I started carrying these around a few weeks ago. In case…”

In case the bloodlust took her over. He remembers a time when that was his greatest worry, it feels like a lifetime ago. Some sick part of him is thankful that the Lazarus Pit isn’t even an option this time around, even as he knows for certain that if it was, there’d be no choice to make.

“They said she’s got a few more hours in surgery,” Thea tells him then, and the lead weight in his stomach grows even heavier. “I think you and Donna should go to the loft, pack a bag, maybe get something to eat.”

When his periphery is finally clear enough to sweep the room, all eyes are on him. Even the ones that are pretending to be preoccupied are watching him without being obvious. It’s a sensation he’s familiar with, though usually, the gazes are laced with fear instead of pity and desperation.

He must have agreed to Thea’s plan, though he doesn’t remember going from the hospital to the loft. They take Laurel’s car, or John’s maybe, he’ll never ride in a limo again in his life. That’s a lesson he should have learned long before tonight, like so many others.

“You should eat something,” Felicity’s mother instructs him weakly once they’ve each silently gathered a bag. It takes Oliver longer than it should to piece together why she’s carrying two. “The last thing she needs right now is you dropping because you haven’t eaten anything since lunch.”

Donna Smoak doesn’t know he once went a week before killing a chicken with his bare hands just to survive. She doesn’t know him at all. No wonder she thinks he’d be good for her daughter.

“ _We_ should eat something,” she clarifies when he stares, frozen, for too long, unable to make himself move in any productive direction. He knows that if he opens the fridge, he’ll only be faced with an unopened bottle of champagne and the what-ifs that came with it.

“I’m no chef, but I can make some eggs,” Donna offers. “Maybe an omelet.”

It’s the stupidest thing in the world to set him off, but it does, and his mouth opens on a silent sob that he can’t stop from coming any more than he can hold the tears back from spilling over. It’s like someone’s punched a hole in a dam, once he starts he can’t seem to stop. Laurel had warned him against blaming himself when they got kidnapped, but another thing Felicity’s mother knows nothing about is his stellar track record for self-flagellation.

Still, she somehow knows exactly what to do. “Don’t you dare,” she warns softly, and when he looks up, there’s none of the horror or pity he’s expecting, just steely resolve. “Don’t you dare give up on her.”

Her conviction is enough to stop the tears at least, and Oliver feels the wasted adrenaline finally leave his body like a leaky balloon. He collapses to the couch, feeling like his bones are made of lead, and she comes over to sit beside him, taking one of his hands in her own.

“I did this…” His words trail off, and in the silence, he prepares himself for whatever rebuttal she’s got. But it seems Felicity isn’t the only Smoak woman who can take him by surprise.

“Yes you did,” Donna agrees, looking around, dabbing the fingers of her free hand delicately at the corners of her eyes. “This apartment, this life, that smile on her face tonight, that’s thanks in no small part to you, Oliver. All those people in that hospital waiting room, all that love that surrounds her, you did that. John and Laurel, and Quentin, and…”

“Thea,” he interrupts, unable to stop staring at the spot of hardwood floor in front of the fireplace that reminds him of how he’s now held his mother, his sister, and his fiancee as they bled out in front of him.

“Thea, right,” Donna repeats. “You gave her a family, Oliver. I’ll never stop being grateful for that.”

_Family_. It’s a word that sounds foreign right now, a concept he almost can’t process with Felicity lying helpless on an operating table. _Grateful_ , that’s another one.

She told him once, on their trip, about the night she had confronted his mother about Malcolm, about the truth of his sister’s parentage. In the moment, all he had been able to hear was a story about how brave she was, how she had been able to stand up to his mother in a way he never had. But now, he knows that night, like this one, was one of those pivotal moments. In fact, they’re practically opposite ends of the same spectrum, mirror images. Secrets and truths, cover-ups and soul-baring revelations, each of them squaring off with the maternal figure they never saw coming.

“It was my mother’s ring, you know,” he tells Donna when his mind travels once again to Moira, taking a second to wonder what she’d think of his bride-to-be. “But it’s been Felicity’s for years. I should have given it to her sooner. I shouldn’t have wasted so much time.”

“It’s a beautiful ring, Oliver,” she tells him, giving his hand a squeeze. “It really is. But it wouldn’t have kept her any safer.”

She means well, but the words only start him on a mental list of all the things that could have.

“This was my fault,” he says again, letting the words echo to the high ceilings of the loft. He hates this place without her, and it occurs to him that when they leave to go back to the hospital, he might never return.  “I put her in the public eye. I made her a target…”

She might not know the full meaning of his words, but that doesn’t stop Felicity’s mother from cutting him off cold.

“You listen to me, Oliver Queen,” Donna ices his train of thought, tugging on his hand until he meets the eyes that are almost painful in their resemblance. “You stop talking like this is in the past, stop it right now. My baby girl is alive. She is the CEO of a billion dollar company and the strongest, smartest person I’ve ever met. You and I both know that nobody puts her anywhere she doesn’t want to be.”

He almost allows himself a bitter laugh at how Felicity’s mother is able to unconsciously mimic the near-exact words her daughter told him just hours ago, but it gets choked on another sob.

“She’d tell you the same thing, we both know she would,” Donna continues, matter-of-fact.

“She did,” he admits after clearing his throat. “She nearly beat me to the proposal.”

“Good for her,” Felicity’s mother responds, with not a small amount of pride and a tiny, sad smile. “I always told her she can have anything she wants, she just has to ask for it.”

Just ask for it. Like it’s that simple. He’s sure they both know if there was a sacrifice to make right now, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits finally, and it’s the most helpless he’s felt all night. Somehow, though, she’s stopped him from crossing the line to hopeless. The Smoak woman, they keep saving him, and he can’t help but hope that there’s another in his future, a little girl with his mother’s blonde hair and Felicity’s everything else.

“I may not be as smart as my daughter but I know her heart like it beats in my chest,” Donna tells him then. “She’s never let herself need someone like she needs you. Not since her father left. And she’s never needed you more than she does right now.”

He wants to explain to her that there is no him without Felicity. He wants to tell her mother that he has no strength to give, without her by his side, he’s Samson with a buzzcut. But the only thing that comes out of his mouth is more selfishness.

“I just want her back.” The plea sounds as weak as he feels, but he’s remembering the way she presses her forehead to his and it makes his heart ache. “I’ll do anything.”

“The only think you have to do is the the thing he couldn’t,” Donna says, and her tone leaves no doubt as to her reference or emotional conviction. “You just have to stay.”

She doesn’t know him well enough to realize what those words mean on his end, she can’t possibly understand how they’ll affect him in this moment. But it’s like she’s reading his history right off his forehead. Before last summer, if something like this had happened, he would have been on his way out of town, flinging himself to the middle of nowhere in an aircraft too small for baggage.

Now, there’s no running. There’s only Felicity, and the time it will take to see her smile again. There’s only her, in a white dress, meeting him at the end of a short aisle. There’s only one place he wants to be, but before he can return to her side, he has to make a promise to her mother.

“ _Always_ ,” he tells Donna, watching her smile and trusting that she understands. She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for. “I’ll never give up on her.”


End file.
